The Mary Sue Strikes Back
by jones2000
Summary: The True Sue has escaped to the Real World, with a plan to permanently rewrite all of Cannon. Now Goldie, Teddy Lupin and Dean Winchester have to save the world, again, while dodging creepy Jensen Ackles stalkers and protecting a clueless fanfic writer.
1. Chapter sponsored by Plot Points, Inc

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Many moons ago, a little common typing error was enlisted into the war against the great and powerful Fan Domain. Together with her companions, a fearsome hunter and a talented wizard, the three of them were given the most important duty in all of Cannon. To defeat the root of all evil, the True Sue.

**Welcome to the highly desirable premiere of the stunning sequel to the massive, insanely popular –**

_**No, that's not right. **_

_**Let me start again.**_

**Welcome to the moderately anticipated sequel to the vaguely acknowledged –**

_**That doesn't sound right either!**_

_**I've got to get into the right headspace, get my mojo working.**_

_**You are the Narrator. Be the Narrator.**_

_**H-ummm.**_

_**Okay, I've got it this time.**_

**Welcome to the Adventures of Goldie Locks.**

**THE MARY SUE STRIKES BACK!**

_**Much better, I think. Being a Narrator isn't as easy as people think, you know. You've got to set the mood, be informative but not be too godlike. Don't spout random junk. People don't like too many words in their fanfic, which is actually kind of stupid, but unless it's an exceptional spot of writing, the average reviewer doesn't want to be stuck combing through your sludge pit for that one gem that will disappear as soon as they've spotted it. **_

_**It reminds me of the time I lost that gem in that sludge pit.**_

_**What? Spouting random junk? Too many words?**_

_**How dare you?**_

_**I am the Narrator! I am God!**_

_**Hold on.**_

_**What does that sign say on the glass door of the recording booth?**_

'_**Narrator Position Available – Inquire Within.'**_

_**Hey!**_

_**You can't replace me! I AM THE NARRATOR! I DEMAND THAT YOU LET ME GO! **_

_**What are you doing with that-?**_

_**Uh oh.**_

**THE MARY SUE STRIKES BACK**

"**I can't begin to imagine why anyone would want to see a sequel from this writer." – **_**A. Pauline Mess.**_

"**Does she actually think she's funny?" – **_**R.U. Serious.**_

"**My brain exploded while reading the intro." – **_**Imin Sane.**_

"**I loved it. Everyone should read it. Now." – **_**Eve L. Spirit.**_

**Script by: jones2000**

**Produced by: jones2000**

**Casting by: jones2000**

**Costumes by: jones2000**

**Makeup by: jones2000**

**SFX by: jones2000**

_One year after the Adventures of Goldie Locks…_

Goldie was bored.

That might not sound like much. She had been bored before, but this was a sparkly new type of bored.

One year earlier she and her friends had saved the world, brought Cannon Character and Mary Sue crashing together with a sonic boom, and mostly foiled the plans of the most evil creature who ever walked the evilish halls of the Evil Academy of Evildom evildoers.

So bloody what?

From there, Goldie was assigned as an advisor to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fictional Characters, Teddy Lupin was promoted out of this atmospheric level and was stuck overseeing some Sue/Cannon treaty over something that was creating a lot of controversy but no one seemed to know exactly why, and Dean Winchester was, well… Dean Winchester.

The three of them were contenders for a long time on talk shows like _Operah _and _Hellen, _and were booked solid for months for interviews on radio and award shows and other events where the politicians had to pretend that they actually cared about the people they represented, like the time they were given the Keys to the City (Teddy had the broom cupboard, Dean the washrooms and Goldie the public toilets). For a long time the only time they saw each other was being bustled about in between events.

She couldn't even pick pockets anymore! Before, she used to collect restraining orders and mandated court appearance notices like some other weirdo would collect butterflies or something, but now she couldn't even rack up a parking ticket! The last person to suffer her kleptomaniacal urges blogged to the whole world that his wallet had been stolen by THE Goldie Locks. He even said that she could keep everything if she wanted to.

Well, that was no fun.

It got lonely.

But the furore died down soon enough, and Goldie took the money she had earned by selling her story and bought herself an old-style, turn-of-the-century mansion that nestled at the bottom of the Valley of Overused Metaphors, and there she withdrew, becoming the Rich-Crazy-Lady-With-All-The-Cats. _See, Mum and Dad? I told you I was going to become rich and famous for all the wrong reasons. Day job, bah!_

Goldie was bored.

She needed excitement. She needed a thrill.

So she sold her house for an obscene amount of money, wrapped herself up in the duster that she had reappropriated from one of the many darkly handsome brooding vampires Cannon seemed to have lying about these days, and was gone.

She had no plan, no map, and absolutely no idea where she was going, but she was damn well gonna rock it up when she got there.

* * *

Teddy was ecstatic when news of his promotion came through.

Less ecstatic when he had to explain to his grandmother and the rest of his extended adoptive family that the job would mean he would have to move half a world away.

And even less ecstatic than that when he realised that a lot of his new position meant he would be sitting with his tall frame being hunched down into a small cubicle as he approved or denied the most mundane of the Royal Society's functions. Needless to say, he was beginning to wonder whether he had made a mistake moving away from all the magic and mayhem that he knew so well.

Sighing, he unlocked the door to his flat and closed it behind himself before leaning back against the wooden panels. One more petition and he swore he'd go-

Noise.

Someone was rummaging around in his kitchen cupboards, and all the books he had been carrying fell around his feet as Teddy reached for his wand, adrenaline pounding through his veins. Excitement! Adventure! _Finally_!

You may have noticed that his threshold for recklessness had been somewhat raised since the incident with the Mary Sues last year.

"Stay where you are!" He shouted, blasting his way into the room, and stumbled to a stop.

Mervin the incredibly annoying bloodhound scientist was standing on a stool, forepaws raised, an Oreo clamped between his canines. His brown puppy eyes became big and mournful as he saw that it was the young wizard standing there with his weapon outstretched.

"What are _you _doing here?" Teddy exploded. The bloodhound may have proven that he was on their side, but the wizard was still a little sore that it was through Mervin's scientific genius that the True Sue managed to tear a hole in the fabric of reality and escape, even though he had been acting under duress. The Sue had threatened to drown his puppies if he didn't work for her.

The dog pulled half of the biscuit from his mouth. "You got any coffee?"

"How did you even get it?"

"In through the window?"

The wizard looked at him blankly. Mervin attempted to explain. "In-tru-der window-? Never mind. I'm yet to meet a Royal Society agent that gets subtle humour." The dog nodded to a letter on the table smeared with owl poop. "I'd read that, if I were you." He suggested. "Do you have any idea how unsanitary that is?"

"You've been reading my mail now?" Teddy seized the letter in question. It was from his schoolgirl girlfriend, mentioning that another one of her cousins was engaged, but she forgot which cousin or who they were engaged to, and, oh yeah, maybe this long distance thing wasn't such a good idea-

_Fan-bloody-tastic._

He cast away the letters and flopped onto the lounge, arms and legs akimbo, completely dejected and deflated. Mervin looked at him sternly.

"That look doesn't become you at all." He said.

"What look?"

"The someone's-just-drowned-my-goldfish look." The canine replied.

Teddy glared at him sourly. "I can look how ever I damn well want to look and no bugger like you is going to tell me I can't." He said primly.

Mervin gave a doggy grin. "That's the spirit, old son! Now, I've got something to make the poor little Teddy Bear feel an itty bit better."

"You're going the right way to get a smack with the newspaper."

The canine scientist ignored him and pulled out a laptop computer from the bag of convenient plot propellers he kept beside himself at most times. Teddy watched. It was always quite astounding to watch Mervin do what he did best, what with the lack of fingers and thumbs.

"You remember that search you asked me to do?"

"What search? I don't recall such a search." Teddy replied stiffly. Mervin rolled his eyes.

"All right, the search you unofficially _suggested _me to do, which happens to be unsanctioned and highly illegal and could end with both of us in jail." He opened up a folder. "I've got a copy of the Cannon Converter's data here, and through that all I had to do was splice on the feed from the reality portal the True Sue escaped through, and with the additional information about her apparent uncompletedness-"

"You've found the Author." Teddy said, staring at the screen.

Mervin reached back into his bag and withdrew a file. "This was extremely hard to get." He said, applauding his own cleverness. "I've had to jump so many servers and cross reference with the archives of the Fan Domain-"

Teddy snatched the file and flipped it open. Staring up at him was a photo of a rather plain looking girl smiling coyly at the camera.

"Where did you get this?"

"It's her profile picture on a thing called MySpace. She lists her likes as Brad Pitt and cheese, and her dislikes as insensitive men and video games."

"Who's Brad Pitt?"

"Are we sure that the True Sue is going to try and find her?"

"The True Sue wants her face completed, and her fanfic pulled out of hiatus." Teddy said grimly. "She'll go after this girl, and she's got a hell of a head start on us."

"Then what are we doing sitting around here yapping? Let's catch the next train into the Real World!"


	2. The Everyman Can

**AN: In most circles, Teddy or Ted is short for Edward, so I've used that when Teddy writes his full name. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just live here.**

* * *

A plan was beginning to begrudgingly come together.

Mervin had calculated the relative time/space between the two dimensions, and had concluded that the spatial differences between Make Believe Land and the Real World were so vastly different that Teddy could spend years of his life searching for the True Sue, and come back to Fiction City to discover that approximately five minutes had passed. No one would ever have to know. Of course, Teddy's adoptive family _may _start to get suspicious if overnight he turned into a crotchety old man whose beard was so long he could tuck it into his belt.

However the problem was not the rather head-spinning time delays or the parts required, for Mervin had bought a second-hand flux capacitor for ten pounds on eBuy from an old woman who only took it out on weekends. The problem actually had a simple solution that neither of them could figure out how to make happen.

To create the portal through space/time, they needed power.

More power than Teddy had in his flat, they had both concluded, as Mervin's experiments wiped out all the fuses for the third night in a row, leaving the hapless wizard sitting in the bathtub in complete darkness.

Using some selective curse words that he had picked up from his Godfather and some he invented on the spot, Teddy slipped into a bathrobe, managed to stumble out into the open-plan flat without too much incident.

And then what his grandmother called '_Nymphadora's curse'_ kicked in and he caught his hip painfully on the edge of the kitchen counter, tripped over his boots that he'd carelessly kicked across the room earlier that afternoon, grabbed the sideboard to keep his balance and sent a photo in it's frame sailing across the room. Needless to say, when he finally discovered his wand and lit the tip, he was quite ready to find the bloodhound and wring his neck.

"We need more power." Mervin said simply as Teddy pointed the beam of bright light at him. "We simply need the use of a facility big enough to generate the power we need." He looked nervous. "Do you mind putting that down?"

Still seething, Teddy lowered his wand. "Well, we can't walk into then Royal Society and ask if we can borrow one of their top secret laboratories that they pretend don't really exist, can we?" He said shortly, a bite of impatience in his voice. Mervin looked like the wizard had walked up to him and slapped him.

"What did you say?"

"I said-"

"I know what you said."

"But you-"

"Why don't we?"

"Why don't we what?"

"Ask the Royal Society if we can borrow one of their secret laboratories that they pretend don't exist?"

"I was being _sarcastic_, you git! I can't just walk in there and ask-"

"No." The bloodhound scientist agreed. "But if you go in there and present all this evidence to whoever is in charge now, and _then_ as to borrow one of their top secret laboratories that they pretend don't exist, that'd give you more of a chance, surely?" He grinned. "Teddy Lupin, you are our only hope."

Teddy's expression was frightful. "I'm going to kill you. Slowly and painfully."

"Ah! You're such a joker, Lupin!"

The young wizard gave quite a nasty grin and blew out the tip of his wand.

The next day Part A of the plan started.

The Head of Department for this branch of the Royal Society was partial to pretty boys, despite being well past it, so Teddy straightened his nose that had been broken twice in Hogwarts' brawls and filled out his rather rangy frame to achieve a more masculine appearance. He kept his head of bright blue hair so that his work colleagues were better able to recognise him in a crowd. While it was fun to wear another face, sometimes it was embarrassing when no one recognised you.

He walked into the office somewhat hesitantly.

"Come on, boy. I don't have all day." And she was there, sitting in her winged desk chair like a throne, arms on the rests, patiently waiting for the next employee to be executed before her as a sacrifice to the heathen gods. She was a red-haired tyrant, a battle-axe in a taffeta skirt.

The older woman peered up at him, and a slow, creeping smile split open her face.

"_Hello,_ Bubblegum." She greeted him, and Teddy had to persuade himself not to growl.

Her name was Endora, and this was her domain.

As a rule, Teddy Lupin tended to steer clear away from witches and warlocks from other fandoms. Two years ago his best friends had managed to persuade him to attend the annual Sorcerer's Convention, and by the end of the day, the conference had degenerated into the worst _my wand is bigger than your wand_ hair-pulling and face-slapping spectacle that he had ever seen.

Teddy had never really felt embarrassed about his extra abilities until that day.

"Have you lost your tongue? One can only hope." The dark crone said cuttingly. "I'm booked solid with appointments the whole afternoon, so either make it quick, or nick off."

"Er, yes, ma'am." Teddy said, the determination to not get angry making his voice sound even more British than usual. "I have this proposal for you." He lay the folder on her desk. _In, out, and nobody gets hurt._ Endora lent forward, eyes sparkling.

"Is it your resignation?" She asked eagerly. Since discovering Wolverine was behind Teddy's promotion, the witch had been positively horrendous toward her reluctant young recruit. He wondered if there was a history there, then banished the thought as his stomach churned uncomfortably.

"No such luck." He said. "A proposal for the use of certain facilities for certain activities." He made to leave.

"Lupin? Turn around."

The almost friendly tone made him stop.

"Good. Now come back here."

Endora wasn't happy until the boy was standing at the foot of the desk. "You're up to something." She said, thumbing through Mervin's carefully prepared report. "Research of a routine nature? Patrolling the borders of Make-Believe Land even resorting to realm-jumping? Who are you trying to fool?"

Teddy felt his face grow hot and forced back the panic.

"I see what you're trying to do."

_Bugger. _

Endora's eyes crinkled at the corners and Teddy was surprised to see that she was actually smiling. "You're trying to destabilise the government, aren't you? Shake up the bureaucracy?"

He wondered how by all things holy she had managed to get that out of the blustery, saying-nothing-in-particular reports and the pie graphs Mervin had pulled out of thin air, but he breathlessly agreed after seeing how eager she had become, and she signed the consent form with a flourish. "Down with the bureaucracy," She said, and handed Teddy back the proposal.

Shaking slightly, the young wizard closed the door behind himself. He stood in the hall for a moment taking deep breaths, and then someone called his name.

"Oi! Lupin!"

Teddy looked up. Coming down the hallway from another office at the end of the hall, dressed as always in grunge chic and wielding a shotgun like it was a medieval mace, was a grinning Dean Winchester. He was closely followed by an even taller man with untidy dark hair and eyes that looked like they could see right through you. It must have been his brother, Sam.

"What are you doing here?"

"We're working a job, my English brother." Dean said. "Or we were. Catch you round, guys,"

He gave the royal wave to three middle-aged, jumpsuited men with proton blasters bowing down their backs that looked heartily pleased to be finally rid of the Winchesters. Teddy glanced to the side and saw the _Ghostbusters _logo sewn onto their uniform.

"I think Dean almost killed them with his enthusiasm." Sam Winchester said. He sounded a little distant, a little preoccupied. In the last book, the brothers Winchester had both been kidnapped by the Mary Sues right out of the middle of their own show. Sam had been OOCd, or completely de-characterised, while Dean had been held captive for several days while the Sue leader stole his image to create a cyborg to help her take over all of Make Believe Land.

"Sam, Teddy. Teddy, Sam. My old man Ted here filled in as the whining sidekick when you were off sick."

"Whatever you say, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes. Teddy could tell by his tone that this had become a conditioned response. He looked cautiously at both brothers to be sure that neither were about to pull a knife on him, and he merged back into his normal form.

That certainly got Sam's attention, and Dean winced. "Do you _have _to do that?"

The wizard shrugged, and for the sheer hell of it changed his hair platinum blonde and back again. "I am what I am."

"Yeah, whatever, McFreaky El Weirdo." Dean muttered, retrieving the brother's weapons bags. Suddenly his eyes brightened and the corners of his mouth lifted. There might as well have been a neon sign above his head saying _I Have An Idea._

"Oh no." Teddy said before he could stop himself.

"I was only going to _ask _you something, you twitchy little Brit tosser."

"I don't have any room for you to stay." He anticipated the question.

"C'mon. It'll only be for a couple of days, a week, _tops_."

"No."

Of course, thanks to the ultra-polite set of ideals that his grandmother Andromeda Tonks had pounded into him when he was a kid, his conviction didn't remain for very long.

_Ma, they followed me home._

Teddy and Sam stood on the sidewalk as Dean parked the Impala into the tiny area beside the flat and step out, not before giving the roof the slightest caress. The young wizard raised an eyebrow.

"Sometime I think she's the only woman he ever really needs." Sam observed in that deadpan way of his.

"Mm." Teddy said. "I hope you don't mind dogs."

An hour after that and his fridge was mostly cleaned out.

"This is great!" Mervin the canine scientist enthused. "It's just like Scouts all over again! Us guys, just hanging out, doing guy things."

"Don't get so excited you pee on the couch, Fido."

"We can stay up late, watch the football, form a sense of brotherly solidarity-"

"If your sentence ends with _'in the morning, I'm making waffles' _I'm drop-kicking your saggy butt into the next time zone." Dean said earnestly.

"Why is the dog talking?" Sam asked seriously.

"Because he got in a fight with Scrappy Doo and ate him."

Teddy threw down his quill. "Can I _please _have some quiet over there?" He said, a note of quiet desperation in his voice. He looked down somewhat tiredly at the parchment in front of him. _I, Edward Remus Lupin, hereby resign from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fictional Characters because my immediate superior is a heinous bitch._

No, that wouldn't go down very well. Teddy ripped off the first page of the pad, and began to write again, his brow creased into a frown of concentration.

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. "Are you okay, kid? You're a bit-" Dean waggled his hand in a seesawing motion.

"I'm fine." Teddy said shortly. "Why would you think I wasn't?"

"Dude, I've seen _corpses _more animated than you."

"His girl dumped him." Mervin helped himself to some popcorn.

"She did _not _dump me." Teddy bit back. "We're just going through… a bit of a rough patch with the long distance relationship-"

"Oh no. He said it." Dean frowned.

"He did." Sam agreed.

"What?"

"Kid, long distance _never _works! You should know that by now. Or-" Winchester peered at him suspiciously, and whatever he saw in Teddy's face confirmed what he thought. "No way. Is this girl you're mooning over the only woman you've ever-?"

"I refuse discuss that with you." Teddy said primly, dipping his quill in the black ink and making another attempt at writing. "Just because _some _of us were born without scruples doesn't mean the rest of the male population has to be dragged down to their level." He finished the sentence he was working on, carefully wiped off his quill, calmly reached for his coat and strode to the door. "Good night, gentlemen. Try not to break anything."

It had been getting claustrophobic in there, and he needed to get away. The last thing he needed to discuss was his love life, or rather _lack of._ Victoire. They'd practically grown up together, and were in and out of each other's houses all the time as kids and teenagers. He probably wouldn't tell anyone else, but he missed her.

He heard footsteps on the ground behind him, moving fairly quickly, and he stepped out of the way to let that person through. When they didn't pass by him, Teddy looked up.

A figure swathed in a long dark cloak was standing before him, and the wizard was suddenly nervous, remembering that he had left his wand back at the flat. "Can I help you?"

The person swept the hood of his cloak back; uncovering a man that Teddy would not have looked at twice down the street but still seemed so darned familiar even though the young man could not figure out where they had met before.

"Do I know you?" Teddy asked curiously.

Then something crashed against the back of his skull, and the world exploded into white pain before cutting out to black, and he fell into the waiting arms of unconsciousness.

The cloaked man looked at the crumpled blue-haired figure on the sidewalk before him, and smiled.

"The name is Everyman."

* * *

Goldie had come to the somewhat irrational conclusion that she was going to continue walking north until she reached the unexplored territories at the far tip of Fiction City, known, for some reason, as 'South Point'.

She stopped at a teahouse along the way owned by an old man who told her to just follow the path until it stopped and then go on a bit more. He was such a nice man that when he asked her if she wanted a cup of tea and a complementary muffin, Goldie couldn't refuse.

She was sitting at a small table in the corner pretending to be posh like all the other customers when something on the front page of the newspaper the man directly opposite her and she stuffed the rest of the muffin in her mouth before casually walking over, grabbing the front page and walking out again.

"Hey!"

Goldie shooed the Disney fairies flocking around her face, and scanned the page.

_Dragon Mating Fails: Veterinarian Takes Over._

_Dark Wizard Gets Nine Months In Violin Case._

Then she found the article she was looking for.

_Royal Society Kidnapping: Police Suspect The Elusive Everyman._

"Oh no."

'… _while going for a walk yesterday evening, Mr Teddy Lupin of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fictional Characters was attacked and kidnapped. Witnesses report seeing a cloaked figure accosting Mr Lupin, and since the case against Lord Voldemort was dismissed by Judge Judy mere hours ago, suspicion has shifted to the cat burglar and sometimes hired killer The Everyman. Demands have not been issued from those responsible as of yet, but the Royal Society are expecting them within the next day and will try their best for Mr Lupin's safe return…'_

"Son of a witch." Goldie hissed. "Damn it, Everyman. I knew I should have killed you when I had the chance."

She threw the paper to the ground and sprinted back the way she came. South Point would have to wait for another day.


	3. Brain Surgery For Beginners

Goldie felt like she had finally come home.

The place was the seediest and skankiest enterprise this side of the Yellow Brick Road. The little pub in question was once a reputable establishment. Goldie remembered the gleaming walls and sparkling floors of her youth, and decided that she much rather liked it this way, even though the toilets were kind of fugly.

She swept through the doors of the Cannon Corner like a queen, and flounced up to the bar.

"I'm looking for Sally."

Poor Sally's real name was Salmonella, and she was one of those unfortunate word paradoxes known as _substitutes._ You know when you're searching for a word you know you know, but you know you don't know what you know and you spend hours with the word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't quite get out before substituting one word for the other? Can you guess Sally's substitute? No? Let's just say that through a careless script editor, Salmonella could have been the next Disney Princess.

Salmonella came out of the back room, all bouncy hair and big blue eyes. She had done all she could to separate herself from the other princesses in Make Believe Land by modifying her gown into a daring micro dress, cropping her hair into a pixie cut, wearing highly impractical stiletto boots when she was out in public, and getting that cool dragon tattoo that covered her back and most of her shoulders.

This was Disney, M rated.

"Well, well, if it isn't Goldie Locks." Her voice was terribly sweet, sort of like decay. "Why, I haven't seen you around these parts since, well, since you saved the world."

"This isn't a social call, Sally."

"It never is. Are you working for the man, now? Did they transplant your brain when they transplanted your looks?"

"At least I'm not a walking sex-line infomercial. I _know_ the phone number on the wall of the men's room is yours." Before Salmonella could rejoin the verbal jousting match, Goldie slapped the newspaper article on the bar. "I need some info, and the underground don't tick without you knowing about it."

Salmonella's eyes narrowed. "You a cop now? God, I always knew you would come to no good."

Goldie tapped at Teddy's grainy newsprint photo. "He's a friend. I don't want to see him hurt."

"Aw, that's sweet. One a scale of one to ten, I'd say that's a definite _'ew'_."

"I'm not in the mod for your schoolyard politics." Goldie seized Salmonella by the straps of her halter-top and pulled the princess down to her level. "I've grown out of the stage where I needed the approval of the head skank to cement my coolness. I may look like a male fantasy, but I can still bring a smackdown on you so hard you'll lose a foot in height."

Salmonella surprised Goldie by starting to laugh, and the woman mimed wiping a tear from her eye. "I missed you, Goldie Locks." She said. "No one else has quite the same style."

"There's only one Goldie Locks. Accept no imitations."

Goldie followed Salmonella into the back room, and many of the faces of the bar's patrons fell as they realised to their dismay that they would not be witnessing a girl-fight any time soon. They went down into the basement, then through a door to the sub-basement, and then down a trapdoor to the sub sub basement.

"You have a sub sub sub basement too?"

"Now that's just silly." Salmonella frowned. "We have five attics, though."

"How do you keep it all together?"

"Silly putty."

The princess flipped a switch on the wall and the two characters were bathed in light. When Goldie's retinas could recognise colour and shape once more, she stared around herself in disbelief.

The walls were almost completely covered with computer screens and lights flashed on and off continuously, almost as if they were blinking at you. About a dozen or more screens to the left and right of the central computer were showing real-time surveillance footage of all of Fiction City, a few of the outer regions, and some even of the Fan Domain. Directly in front of them was a massive computer terminal.

"Welcome to the inner sanctum."

Goldie blinked. "Where the hell did you get all this? Did you rob a nerd?"

Salmonella shrugged. "I was bored one weekend." She sat down at the massive terminal and fired it up. "Nothing ticks and gets by me. What my grass doesn't pick up, Pete does."

"Pete?"

"Prototype Extrasensory Tracking Extension." She said.

"He's a mechanical spy?" Goldie asked dubiously.

"The best spy in the world." Salmonella said proudly. "Anything, anywhere that might have some major repercussion on the rest of the world, PETE hones in on whatever psychic energy is in the air and zeros in on the source, assessing the danger. He's attached to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fictional Character's database, so he has access to any source in the world."

A great metal tentacle with a computer on the end sunk down to Goldie's level. A giant eye appeared on the screen and blinked at her a moment before opening a file.

_Goldie Bella Locks. 486 years old. Typing Error. Resident of the Shire of Fairy Tales, currently of Fiction City. Parents: Fairy Tale Extras, Deceased. Was Sueified while in the Fan Domain._

"You'll have to do better than that to impress me, metal head." Goldie folded her arms crossly. For some reason, a living computer who knew exactly who she was, was a little unnerving. Pete the computer blinked at her and then pulled something else up, as if to show her that there was still more to how great he was.

_Goldie Locks was assigned with the metamorphagus Teddy Lupin to extract the Cannon-napped Dean Winchester from the Fan Domain. _Pete cocked his eye to the side._ The three of them stopped the world as we know it from ending._

"All you needed to do was read a paper to know that." Goldie snapped.

Pete made a huffing noise, before spitting out his final bit of information.

_Teddy Lupin has been kidnapped by the Everyman. Goldie Locks cares for Teddy Lupin._

"Anyway." Salmonella interrupted. "Pete here registered something unusual about a week ago and I went and had a closer look. Your Teddy Lupin has been a naughty boy."

Goldie winced at her tone. "Stealing-office-paperclips naughty or full-frontal naughty?" She asked. She couldn't imagine Teddy ever doing something truly bad, and if he did, there was probably a bloody good reason for him doing it.

"Babe, I'd say it's a definite pants-down." Salmonella tapped something on the computer, and Pete brought up a different slice of information on each screen. "For about a week up until his disappearance, Pete has lodged some strange goings-on in mister Lupin's brain."

"Does it bother you at all that you're playing around in people's brains?" Goldie demanded.

"So we had a look." Salmonella continued. "He got himself exclusive access to one of the Royal Society's hidden facilities and the readings coming out of there are quite remarkable. Now tell me, why would an upstanding young citizen like Teddy Lupin want to tear through the fabric of the universe as we know it?"

"Huh?" The screen with the giant eye once again transformed, showing a graph of electrical activity and some impossible equations that had been entered into the system to form the desired result. She touched one of the equations, and narrowed her eyes. Looking at their complexity, and even though she had no idea what they meant, Goldie knew there had to be another mind behind the mathematics. A clever, cunning, canine mind.

And she growled.

"Those idjits!" She exploded. Now all she had to do was find out why Mervin and Teddy had been trying to follow the True Sue through all the conceivable realities. And what the Everyman was doing aiding the enemy of all Fiction. Because, no doubt about it, the two were linked.

_Ew._

"Hey! Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna find Teddy, I'm gonna find Everyman, but first I'm gonna find the little wiener who started all this."

"Great!" Salmonella exclaimed. "I'll get my coat."

"What? You're not coming."

"Of course I am." The princess said matter-of-factly. "With this remote-access remote, I can access Pete anywhere, which means I can track anyone you want. And there's not a doorman alive who can resist me." She said this with no hint of irony. "Come on, it'll be fun. Us two girls, trekking across country unknown. It'll be just like we're back in highschool."

"You flushed my head down the toilet once a week in highschool!"

Salmonella smiled mysteriously.

* * *

You know The Everyman.

Yes, you do.

He's that actor in the movie you're watching right now that you're certain you've seen somewhere before, but when you look on the credits for him he slips by unlisted. He's the character that has a walk-on in a book and even a speaking part, but his name is never mentioned. He's the uncredited sidekick, the slaughtered villager, the shot messenger, the overlooked bit player, the moustache-twirling bad guy who dies without anyone ever knowing his name, and the hospital clerk who does nothing but sit in front of the intercom and say things like _'paging Dr Shepherd'_ all day.

He's the Everyman.

It used to drive him to frustration that no matter how big a role was, he never got mentioned, but then he began to realise something. He wasn't quite the invisible man (besides, that title was already copywritten to another legal entity), he was something much, much better.

He was the _unnoticeable_ man.

Naturally enough, that led him into crime. Petty enough to begin with, but as he got on, more and more he found that the shadowy figures of Make Believe Land's underground were discreetly contacting him and offering him temporary employment.

Thief. Assassin. No one ever remembered his face, so even while life passed him by, so did the authorities.

Then he was contacted by his biggest and most unstable client. She called herself the True Sue, Queen of all Fiction Clichés. Everyman privately thought she was delusional, but her money was good. She hired him long-term, saying that it made sense for the most underrated character in the world to go into business with the most overexposed. This would be a very profitable partnership.

She'd disappeared a year ago now, and Everyman was certain that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fictional Characters had finally caught up with her.

_Better her than me._

Then out of the blue one day, a message came to him from her, requesting his presence in the Real World. She wished to discuss her modified plan with him, now that part of her scheme had been uprooted by a small band of vigilante characters.

Now Everyman, like all good denizens of Make Believe Land, had been brought up with the tales of the fantastical, mythical land of the Real World, the place where there were no happily ever afters. He knew what she was saying was pure rot, but as the True Sue offered to triple his pay, he followed her instructions to the letter to humour the old girl.

And he stepped through to the Real World.

Tears gathered in his stinging eyes as he breathed in the blanket of chemicals that clutched the city in its cocoon, and drivers screamed obscenities at him for his very audacity to dare to run across the highway to reach the small park on the block, hopefully where there might be a small patch of cleanness in this unholy place.

His hopes were to be dashed as he stepped on a smashed beer bottle inside the gate and he saw children making weapons out of the play equipment and making suspect deals up by the back fence. The parents looked depleted and tired, their spirits having been broken long ago as another suspicious adult lurked around the perimeter of the park discreetly taking photos.

"Everyman."

He recognised her voice. It was her. He turned, and saw her wrapped in a long, azure cloak, wearing and ornate mask. At her shoulder stood two young men with adoring, if vacant, expressions on their faces.

"Mary Sue." He said.

* * *

Dean and Sam were on the prowl. Unfortunately their form was ruined by Mervin, who was slouching along fairly unenthusiastically at their heels. "Christ." Dean finally cursed at the canine scientist. "Why don't you just put a sign 'round your neck saying Please Kill Me?"

"This is stupid." Mervin growled. "We should be doing something! We should tell the authorities what we know!"

"Are you nuts? Do you want to get arrested? There's nothing we can tell anyone that will get the kid back any faster, but will land the three of us in the joint. You think you can handle the jailhouse rock, hound dog?"

"Don't ever do that again." Mervin frowned. "Teddy's out there somewhere with a deranged lunatic and here we are belting the snot out of a few demons stupid enough not to have life insurance with Death & Sons. How is that helping?"

"Listen, you spineless poodle, this isn't our first rodeo, with the kidnapping and the death threats." Dean said. "Just let us do our jobs, yeah?"

"And your job is what again?"

"Be a good doggie or there'll be no more walkies for you."

"You always have to do that, don't you?" Sam demanded of his brother.

"Do what?"

"Goad the secondary characters. We get into most trouble that way!"

"Do not."

"Do too!"

"Bitch."

"Jerk,"

"Oh my God, are you both ten?" Mervin looked up at them both irritably. He'd woken up irritable and stayed irritable, and the antics of the Winchesters weren't helping. He was the greatest mind in all of Fiction City and the Fan Domain! So why couldn't he locate a friend?

"So you're saying I should drop the banter? But that's a Supernatural trademark! They don't tune in every week to see you walking about in your undies and socks staring at the computer until your eyes are all blotchy and are about ready to fall out of their sockets. Dude, I have pretty low ew factor, but that's scungy even for me."

"What I'm saying is it'd be nice if you stopped pissing people off who want to kill us!"

Mervin put his head in his paws despairingly. "These are the men who make the most powerful demons in the world quake in fear."

"Hard to believe it, no?"

She was an amazingly good-looking woman, and both Sam and Dean raised their shotguns and aimed. Neither of them had much luck with amazingly good-looking women. "Hiya, boys." The woman said, and out of her shadow stepped the diminutive figure of Goldie Locks. Goldie looked at the three of them sternly for a moment.

"Talk about stealth!" She exclaimed. "We could hear that girly shouting match two streets over."

The brothers Winchester actually managed to look slightly ashamed of themselves.

"Right then," Goldie placed her hands on her hips and looked at them in a steely-eyed manner a mother might employ. "Someone's been naughty, and I want to know all the details."

"And spanking will be applied as deemed necessary." Goldie's companion added.

"Now there's a novel idea. Can I be the first to sign up?" Dean said, giving Salmonella the full deadly blast of his bedroom-eyes.

"It depends on how bad you've been." Sally replied, batting her eyelids.

Mervin the bloodhound turned to Goldie and Sam.

"And they turn the garden hose on _us_!"

* * *

**AN: For fun, I've done a little sketch of Teddy and Goldie and whacked on a little colour. Link on my page.**


	4. The Pitfalls of Fame

Teddy slowly roused himself out of the murky soup that had clouded his mind. His vision was still swirling madly around him and for a moment he thought he must have woken up in a Jackson Pollock painting. Then everything settled into stark reality and he wished he were still unconscious.

It looked like the pink fairy had committed suicide. Everything in the room was splashed with the sickeningly sweet girly colour and the walls were draped with velvet tapestries emblazoned with prancing unicorns and rainbows. There were frills and lace everywhere, and mean-looking dollies glared menacingly at him from behind glassy eyes and fixed porcelain smiles.

It was so invariably cutesy that it made him want to vomit.

Teddy rolled from the bed, and a jolt of fire raced up his spine. He gripped his back, wincing. Someone had considerately placed him on an unbearably soft feather bed, which had given him a massive bowed back. Teddy had to have a prescription mattress since that Quidditch accident in his last year of school.

He touched his toes a couple of times to get some feeling back into his extremities, and took a step forward toward the door.

And collided nose first with a solid invisible force.

Teddy stumbled back, clutching his face. In the last year or so, he had been banged around so much that his nose had taken on a permanent leftward cast. He reached out a hand, and his palm touched the invisible field. His fingers tingled and there were blue sparks dancing over his fingers. It was quite an unusual sensation.

Teddy was still staring at the strange force field when the gilded doors opened.

His heart plummeted like a stone as he saw who was standing there.

"Not you again."

"Hello, darling." The True Sue said, spreading her arms wide. She was wearing silver-embroidered blue this time, which clashed horrifically with the pink room. "Long time."

"No desire whatsoever to see." Teddy replied bluntly.

"Why so cold? What did I ever do to you?"

He pursed his lips. "Well, there was that time you chained me to a pole, tried to kill my friends, and wanted to take over the world."

"Hmm?" The True Sue looked at him innocently. In fact, Teddy was rather certain that she had entirely dismissed out of continuity those occurrences that she didn't like.

"So, Sue, what scheme is it this time?" He asked flatly, pressing both palms hard against the field, willing himself to walk out of there and strange her. "Hire all of the world's supervillains, again, to wipe out all of Cannon, again?"

The ultimate Mary Sue looked smug. "Not _supervillains_," She said. "Super_villain_."

"Did someone call?"

The man entered in true villain style, dressed all in black and swishing the edge of his long cloak with his hand. Teddy recognised the man he had seen before in the street, but could still not place a name to the face.

"Who're you?"

"This is the Everyman." The True Sue said grandly. "My partner in arms. " She waved her arms around in an airy circle. "In time, with my help, he will be-"

"Cannon's ultimate supervillain." He said in a self-congratulatory way.

"You're going to destroy Cannon? Again? Isn't that getting a bit old?"

"That's what I said." The Everyman cast him an approving glance. "That's when I decided that to win this war, we're going to have to _rewrite _it."

"What?"

"Bring her to me!" The True Sue snapped.

Teddy heard a scuffle outside the door and at the same time Everyman ripped aside one of the unicorn tapestries.

"Merlin's arse."

Behind the wall hanging was a small office-sized alcove, fitted out with desk, swivel chair and computer. But what filled Teddy with dread were the piles and piles of paperwork heaped around the desk. And the seven books piled up one on top of the other, spines facing outwards.

_Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows…_

The True Sue took hold of both doorhandles and pressed down. "And lo," She said. "Creation meets creator."

"Let me go!" A haughty British voice screeched through the door. "You'll pay for this! My lawyers will tear you to shreds, and that's after my husband finishes with you!"

Two vacant-eyed men came into the room, a bedraggled blonde woman betweens them. She was propelled toward the computer, but in an act of defiance, she did not sit down but faced them all stubbornly.

The Everyman turned to Teddy.

"Meet JK Rowling." He said pleasantly. "Joanne, there's someone here that you might recognise."

And a worried Teddy Lupin met the eyes of a frantic JK Rowling. Both of them froze, and JK's legs almost gave out from under her. "No. It can't be." She whispered. After a moment, she stretched out a hand to touch the shield over Teddy's hand. His fingers were longer than hers were. Finally she spoke, her word only for this other man, the one somehow plucked out of her very mind.

"But you're not real."

"Everyone's real to someone." Teddy replied. Then his face hardened. Fine, they had kidnapped him, but to capture his Author as well?

"You're not going to get away with this. Both our friends and families will come after us." He snarled.

"Oh, I'm very good at cleaning up after myself." The Everyman said. "No one is going to find _you_ until I want them to."

The hostility seemed misplaced in the pink room.

"Oh, God." JK said breathlessly.

"Don't worry, I've got friends." Teddy hissed to her. "They'll come after me, and I'll get you home. I promise."

She looked back up at him blankly. "But you're not real." She repeated, as if she said it enough times everything would go away.

"Everyone's real to someone." Everyman jeered, throwing the Englishman's words back at him. He took JK by the shoulders and firmly sat her in the chair behind the computer. With the utmost care, he flamboyantly selected a single stuffed file from the masses of notes.

The file was labelled _Lupin & Tonks._

"What are you doing?" Teddy demanded.

"My dear boy, haven't you figured it out yet?" The Everyman spoke. "I finally figured it out. The only way anyone can ever control our world is to control those that put it there in the first place." He slapped the file down in front of JK, who flinched. He pointed at a spot on the page. "There. Erase that." He commanded her.

The True Sue clapped her hands delightedly. "We're going to rewrite all of Cannon!"

"_You can't do that!_"

"Erase that passage!"

As JK began to cross out vast lines of text, a sharp blinding pain hit Teddy fair between the eyes. He crumpled, gasping.

"What did you do?" He wheezed.

The True Sue was smiling as she looked over JK's shoulder as the poor woman continued to scrub out line after line of text. "That was your little Weasley girlfriend." She said matter-of-factly.

He looked at her blankly, confused. "What girlfriend?"

The Sue and Everyman exchanged looks. "Exactly." The Everyman raised an eyebrow. "Soon your old personality will cease to exist, and we will rebuild you from the ground up. A _completely new character_!"

Teddy bowed his head, defeated, as the bits of Cannon that made him the Teddy Lupin that the world knew and loved were taken away. They were going to rebuild his character.

But the worst bit was that he had no clue which bits were being erased.

* * *

The offices were mostly deserted at this time of the night. All of them were there, and Goldie grudgingly admitted that it was probably for the best. Mervin was a certified genius, Salmonella could talk her way past any man even if he was a eunuch, and you couldn't help but be comforted by the two muscled giants following at the rear who would not hesitate to blow away anything in your way.

Mervin fired up the computer terminals in the lab. "This is a plothole generator." He said. "I've fed in the basic coordinates of the True Sue's Author, and samples of our DNA, so we can be 95.6 percent certain of our materialization on the other side."

"Oh." Dean said. "Wait. I don't remember giving you a sample of my DNA."

"It's a funny story actually. You remember that girl I set you up with-?"

"Hold on." Sam spoke up. "If we all go through, who's to stop someone else from walking through the plothole?"

Mervin gave him a haughty look. "The generator cuts out after a default of two minutes after all subjects have materialized on the other side of the event horizon."

"Great. But when we have to go back, won't someone have to be here to turn it back _on_? We _were _planning to go back home, weren't we?"

Everyone looked at him, and Sam pulled a face. "It's called logic. You lot should try it sometime."

"Oh, fine." Salmonella sighed theatrically. "How does one know when you're trying to get back?"

"Er, that light there turns red."

"And then I just push this button here?" She pointed to a big button with _PUSH _emblazoned across it.

"In theory."

The generator hummed and smoked, and a hole in the air began to appear. "You know, we should really meet up some time when I'm through saving the universe and all." Dean said offhandly to Salmonella.

Sally grinned. "Oh, you three dimensional characters are so _sexy_."

Sam heaved a long-suffering sigh and pulled his brother through the plothole.

* * *

"I feel overdressed." Dean said as he followed his brother and Goldie down the strip as girls in bikinis and short shorts paraded past. Goldie was beginning to wonder whether she and Sam would have to drag the eldest Winchester brother away from all that exposed female skin.

Mervin, meanwhile, was scampering around their feet on all fours, all brown fur and flying sand.

"Oh, man, this is weird. I'm three-dimensional! I can beg! I can chase my tail!" He ran in a circle and collapsed in the sand, panting.

"You really need to get out more." Goldie said.

"I'm in another dimension. How much further _out_ can I get?"

"Are we sure that the True Sue will come after this girl?" Sam Winchester asked.

"Positive." Goldie said coldly. "So we have to be ready for her when she turns up." She handed the address across to him. "This is where she lives. We have to beat the True Sue there."

Sam frowned at the bit of paper. "You've got to be kidding."

_42 Wallaby Way, Sydney._

Goldie attempted to whack his shoulder, but because of their relative heights, she ended up hitting him above the hip. "Let's go find Nemo."

"Did someone say something?" Dean asked.

* * *

The house was small and quaint, dwarfed by the massive buildings either side of it. Angry teenage girl music was blasting from the windows.

Dean frowned. "Someone needs to teach this kid how to rock out."

Goldie knocked on the peeling green door.

After a couple of minutes there was a clatter down the hallway, and the door opened to reveal a pretty girl with a hard face and big, mascara-lined eyes.

"Yeah?"

"We're looking for Casey Elton." Goldie said.

The teenager suddenly looked furtive. "I swear all that stuff is legal in the states and territories. I checked and everything." She said quickly.

Sam's eyebrows rose. "As interesting as that lead-in is, we're not here about… whatever you did."

The girl stared at Sam. Then she looked across to Dean.

And she fainted.

Stunned, the four of them looked down on the collapsed body in the hall.

"I think you killed her." Mervin said helpfully.


	5. Sam and Dean going to the Ball

**AN – The Frying Pan and the Great Moments In Fiction convention don't exist, btw.**

Between them, Sam and Dean managed to get the girl back inside the house and Goldie closed the door behind all of them, quickly checking to make sure that no one on the sleepy street were watching the strange troupe.

Sam was the one that placed her carefully on the lounge and made sure she was still breathing. If it was Dean, he would have been happy just to leave her lying on the floor.

"She looks different to her photo." Dean cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowed.

"That's because it's not her." Sam said patiently.

"It could be," His brother argued back. "How many people do you know that actually put their real photo on MySpace?"

Goldie rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "God give me strength. You would have to be the most irritating brothers I've ever met, and I've met _quite _a few."

"But we're pretty. Doesn't that get us a _few _brownie points?" Dean raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking in a grin. Goldie's flinty gaze didn't flicker. Sam was standing over the girl, studying her with a hand on his chin.

"She looks similar to the photo." He said.

"Similar in what way?"

"Similar in the way that if you screw up your eyes and squint, Dean and I look familiar, too."

Dean shrugged. "So this is Elton's _sister_?"

There was noise the other end of the house, and the angry-girl music was finally cut off.

"Squeaker, I told you to turn that crap off! I'm trying to study. Squeaker?"

Footsteps came down the hall and Sam, Dean, Mervin and Goldie were like statues around the lounge. Goldie spotted Dean's hand snaking around to the back of his jeans. "Don't make me frisk you before we leave." She hissed. "Because I can guarantee I'll enjoy it much more than you will."

Looking disappointed, he withdrew his hand.

The young woman came down the hallway with her mobile phone in one hand and an autographed cricket bat in the other. "Who are you people and why the hell are you in my house?" She glanced at the lounge. "And what did you do to my sister?"

"If I could answer those questions in reverse order," Mervin said, his front paws held out in front of him. "I do believe your sister was overcome by our very presence."

The woman stared dumbly at the talking dog, her stare fixed on him. And then slowly her eyes began to rove over the others in the room. The mutant dog thing. The blonde that reminded her of a girl she had hated in high school. And –

She rocked back on her heels, and the Winchesters lent forward in case they needed to catch her before she too fainted in a state of shocked euphoria.

"I don't believe it! It's you! I mean, it's _you!_ Oh my God, _you're _here! It can't be, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, in my place!"

Sam and Dean looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

"What do you mean?" Mervin asked blankly.

The woman returned his stare just as blankly. "What do you mean, what do I mean?" She asked. A moment after, she seemed to realise that she was talking to a dog and he was answering her back quite legibly, and she sat down heavy on the lounge where her sister was beginning to rouse.

Squeaker looked up at Sam and Dean towering over the lounge and smiled groggily. "I've had this dream before..." She said dreamily, before slipping back into sleepy-land. Sam was looking bemused and Dean was starting to get irritated, so Goldie decided to step in to break up the fight before it started.

"You're Casey Elton?" She asked. "You look different to your MySpace photo."

"It's still me. I used one of my old school photos." She said defensively. "I'm... implementing an experiment in social behaviour."

"An experiment on social behaviour _To Catch a Predator _style?" Dean asked sarcastically. Casey nodded, resolutely not looking him in the face.

"What do you want?"

"This is going to sound strange," Goldie warned. "Beyond strange. _Twilight Zone _strange. _X Files _strange."

"I've got two deluded TV stars, a Muppet and Little Miss Muffet standing in my lounge room. How could it get any weirder?"

"Well, for one, I personally know Little Miss Muffet, and trust me, I'm _no _Little Miss Muffet." Goldie replied. "One of the story characters of yours that you abandoned is trying to take over our world."

She just looked at them blankly.

"You _are_ Casey Elton, right?" Goldie demanded. "The one that wrote all that really bad fanfiction and never even bothered to finish it?"

"Don't remind me." Casey groaned and put her head in her hands. "That period was so horrible it still gives me nightmares. The first time I actually thought I could _write._ I removed all of the copies of my early work from my server because it just sits there staring at me."

"All of them?" Goldie deflated.

"Yes. Why?"

"Because we believe she is on her way here." Sam said. "She was forced into hiding in our world, but believes if she gets her Author to complete her story and give her her face, she will be able to rewrite all of Cannon."

"Omigod." Squeaker rocketed up off the lounge, her eyes sparkling with excitement. Goldie knew the teenager had probably been listening to the whole conversation. "Omigod, _that's _what it's all about."

Casey looked at her sister blankly. "You what?"

"Rewrite Cannon!" Squeaker exclaimed. "She needs the original author, right?" She looked up at Sam, who nodded. "I'll be right back."

She sprinted down the hallway, and Casey sighed again. "So you all expect me to believe that you, and you, are the _real_ Winchesters? And he's a _real_ talking dog?"

"I could have been the star of _Family Guy, _I could." Mervin said.

"That's what we expect you to believe." Dean said.

"And who are _you_ supposed to be?" Goldie found herself pierced by Casey's stare.

"Goldie Locks. I'm a typing error."

"Of course you are."

"Listen, kid, I don't expect you to believe us, but the bottom line is that you may be the only one that can save the world. So we could either stay here and actually cooperate, or I'll knock you out and we'll take you back to Make Believe Land."

"This is insane. You can't be who you say you are."

Dean rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and indicated Sam. "We could probably summon up a demon. That's bound to convince her."

Casey went pale.

"I'll keep that in mind as a contingency plan." Goldie said. "Not at the moment though, boys."

"Yes, boss."

Casey's sister banged into the room just then. "This has been all across the news for _days_." She said, brandishing her laptop. "I don't know why you haven't heard about it." She said to Casey, and sat the computer on the coffee table. Goldie, Mervin, Sam, Dean, and Casey lent forward to read what was written in bold letters across the screen.

_**Megaselling Harry Potter author is kidnapped.**_

"Oh no." Goldie whispered. It was looking less and less good for Teddy.

"'_Yesterday afternoon at the Rowling estate, possibly the most famous author of modern day, Joanne Kathleen Rowling was snatched from her home only metres away from her husband and children'._" Sam read. **"**_**'**__Police and volunteer searches found no trace of the author. To date no ransom has been demanded from the kidnappers.'_"

"She's starting with the biggest fandom in Fiction City_._" Goldie said softly.

"Oh, man." Dean said.

"We've got to find Teddy." Goldie said firmly. "Now."

"There's already a pretty big possibility he's already-"

"Don't say it."

"Rewritten. If we find Teddy, he'll be a completely new character."

Goldie turned her cold eyes on Casey. There was only one person in this room who could pinpoint the True Sue's location with any accuracy, and that was her. Casey looked nervous.

"What?"

"If I describe the True Sue, do you think you could recognise her character?" She asked. "She's got a friend of mine, and if what Squeaker just showed us is right, she's using him to see if her plans to rewrite all of Cannon will actually work."

Casey swallowed, and the sound echoed around the room. For a moment it was so quiet that you could hear a sparrow fart. Then-

"Yes." She said in a small voice.

Goldie sat down opposite her interrogator-style, with Sam and Dean flanking her either side. Mervin sank down to the floor between her legs.

"She's amazingly beautiful." She started. "And can enchant with her words. Males fall automatically under her spell if she wants them to, and women either adore her or want to kill her. She likes pink. She's devious and ruthless, good at concealing her true nature from people."

"Do you know how many possibilities you just described then?"

"She's a megalomaniac. Satan's whore." Dean added helpfully.

"Her fanfiction went on permanent hiatus." Sam also put in. "And left her without a face."

"Did I mention she likes pink?"

Casey was lost in thought for a minute, her brows furrowed, when she suddenly got up and walked away.

"Casey?" Goldie asked in surprise as she heard a door open, and she turned to look at Squeaker.

"She might have deleted everything off her computer, but she always keeps hard copies of whatever she writes." The younger girl said. "She's done it for years."

"Even the stuff she hates?"

She shrugged. "Learning from your mistakes and all that junk."

Casey came back into the room with several armfuls of papers. She handed two manuscripts to each of them, keeping three for herself and one for her sister.

"My early, _early _stuff. Please keep any opinions you may have to yourself, and just read."

"Casey-"

"_You _don't even know this character's name, and I've written fanfiction since I was a teenager." Casey pointed out.

Dean was about to protest, but she cut him off. "You need to find the absolute right character. If you have, you can – what _are_ you going to do?"

Goldie suddenly found every eye in the room on her. "We find Teddy." She said firmly.

"And then what?"

"We make up our own ending."

Despite her words of bravado, Goldie's conviction began to wander as she struggled through the different sized fonts and Casey's poor excuse for handwriting. Then something jumped out at her.

_I sat in my favourite seat and started unseeingly out the wide widow which looked over the grimy city. I smoothed my skirt. The time was nearing, I told myself. Soon I would never have to spend any more time alone. They would all be mine._

Revitalised, Goldie skimmed the manuscript for further information. "Guys." She interrupted. "Listen to this.

_The windows stretched from wall to wall. I could see the whole world, but they could not see me, hidden away behind the cement and glass structure with my pretty boys standing guard beside me. The walls were damp, and smelled funny but my ordeal would be over soon enough. Soon I would emerge from the darkness. The world would remember me again."_ Goldie looked up. "A building made of glass and cement, with damp walls that stink."

"I could have been describing over half the buildings in Sydney." Casey said.

Squeaker, who up until this moment had been silent, decided to step into the conversation.

"Well, there's the Frying Pan," She said tentatively.

"Frying Pan?" Sam asked, eyebrows raised.

"An architectural impossibility." Casey said. "Designed by students to prove they could. It's like this big, round cement dish with a straight hall for visitors sticking out the front. You'll understand if you see it."

"And-" Squeaker pulled her computer back into her lap and began to furiously search for something. "Over the next week or so, there's going to be a worldwide convention there."

"Convention of what?" Dean asked.

Squeaker pulled up several photographs of the upcoming event and showed them to him. "Great Moments In Fiction." He read.

"Authors, actors, writers, and more are going to be coming here to the Convention. It was easier just to get them all in at once instead of holding separate conventions throughout the year."

Goldie slapped Dean's arm. "The most well-known authors and writers in the one place." She said.

"She's going to do it all at once." Sam said grimly. Goldie looked down at the papers she was holding. _Evangalista Fairchild._ Crumpling the papers up, she stuffed them down her shirt, where she was sure not to lose them.

"Let's go."

"There's a problem." Squeaker halted them all in their tracks. "The convention. It's opening tonight, beginning with a black tie award presentation."

"Of course it is." Goldie rolled her eyes.

"Don't worry about it." The look on Dean's face was sneaky. "I think we can handle this."

"How do you mean?"

"Miss Elton, Miss Locks, would you ladies care to come to the ball?"

* * *

Goldie had written down on a sheet of paper hers and Casey's height, waist and bust size and folded it in half before handing it across to Sam and gravely informing him of what would happen if he let it slip into Dean's hands. Sam nodded and tucked it in his jeans pocket, and the brothers roared out of the driveway in Casey's little green Mazda. Half an hour later they were back, with suits for themselves and two surprisingly nice dresses. Squeaker sulked throughout the proceedings, disappointed that she was not going.

Goldie shuddered to think of how they had acquired thus items, and decided she really did not want to know.

As the opening of the convention drew nearer, Squeaker gave both Sam and Dean a crash course on being Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. While Sam listened intently, brows drawn, Dean stared off into space, twirling the end of his tie.

"I still think 'Ackles' sounds like some sort of skin condition." He grumbled when Squeaker stopped for air.

"Tonight you _are_ going to be Ackles." Goldie said, running a brush through her hair. "We're your dates from the set so you both wouldn't look quite so desperate if you turned up alone. We're going to get Teddy out and bring the True Sue and the Everyman down. But until we actually _see _one of them, you and your brother are going to smile and shake people's hands, and hug your fans and generally be proper Texan gentlemen unless I say otherwise."

"Sir, yes sir."

"Question." Mervin spoke up. He would be staying with Squeaker, keeping her away from the blogging sites. "What if they run into the real actors?"

A very real possibility, which could endanger lives.

Squeaker shrugged. "Pretend you're a super creepy stalker. It works for me."

Everyone stared at her.

"What?"


End file.
